by Ralph Moody
When I first looked up, all I could see was Millie’s pink bloomers. She’d shaken the bees off into the dishpan and started down, holding the pan in both pans, but her skirt had caught on a twig and she backed out of it. She’d yanked at the skirt a few times with her elbow, but the twig only poked through the cloth, and the bees seemed to have gone crazy. They were everywhere. The tune of their hum had changed till it sounded like forty runaway buzz saws, and Millie’s howls made it sound as if all the saws were hitting nails. I didn’t have time to find a solid limb for the ladder, but shoved it toward the center of the tree, and scrambled up to get Millie unhooked.
Just as I reached for the twig that was holding her skirt, the ladder lurched and one of my feet went through between two rungs. I grabbed for anything to save myself. The next thing I knew, I was hanging there with Millie’s skirt hauled down over me like a tent. There were forty or fifty mad bees in there with me, and Millie was shrieking like a fire whistle. I heard the dishpan fall just as she started pounding my head with both fists and calling me a senseless idiot.
Tree branches were breaking and I could feel we were falling, but I couldn’t see a thing, and clutched the skirt tighter. If it hadn’t been for Millie, I wouldn’t have known what to do when we hit the ground. My veil was ripped loose from my hat, Millie’s skirt was split to the waist, and my legs were all tangled in the ladder. She stopped just long enough to see that I could get free, then jumped up and ran for the watering trough at the back corner of the barn. I went right behind her, and at least half of the bees went with us. It felt as if a million wild bushmen were shooting me with poisoned arrows.
It was lucky that the old watering trough was a great big hogshead, and that all but a foot of it was set down into the ground. Millie jumped into it like a bullfrog—only she went feet first—and I jumped in right beside her. My mouth was open, and I was still catching my breath from running, when Millie ducked my head under the cold water. When she let me up, I was choking and nearly drowned, and two or three dozen bees were floating around on top of the hogshead.
I never knew before that cold water could feel so good, and would have stayed there all morning if Millie had let me. As soon as the bees had stopped buzzing around our heads, she made me climb out. She said we’d have to put mud on our welts right away to draw the poison, or we would be awfully sick, and we might even die. Millie was stung just as much as I, but mine were mostly on my face, neck, and arms. We dug into the bank below the spring and got some smooth, wet, blue clay. I plastered it on my neck and face till there were just holes for my eyes, nose and mouth. And, from the tops of her shoes to her bloomers, Millie looked like an artist’s clay model.
At first, the wet clay felt about as good as the cold water, but when it began to dry out, I thought my head and arms would break into flames. All the time we were putting on the clay, Millie kept worrying and fretting about what Grandfather would say because we’d lost the swarm of bees. But as it dried, she forgot about Grandfather, and only talked about bees. The things she said about them got hotter right along with the stings.
I’d been stung so many times between the fingers of my right hand that they stuck out like red bananas on a stalk. Of course, I couldn’t pitch dressing with them, and Millie had to help me unharness the horses. Mrs. Littlehale had heard Millie scream and had seen what was happening. She brought us some white pills that we had to take every hour, but they didn’t seem to help the burning or the swelling. By noon, my face had swollen till I could only see a crack of light through one eye, and my lips felt as if they were big enough for a hippopotamus. I knew Millie must be feeling just as bad as I, but she did all the evening chores alone, and made me sit in the house with a cold, wet towel over my face. I couldn’t eat anything, but before bedtime, she brought me a couple of eggs, beaten up with warm milk and vanilla. And she never said a word about my letting the ladder wabble so that she caught her dress in the apple tree.
In spite of the bee stings, I’d been sort of drowsy during the afternoon, but couldn’t sleep when I went to bed. The night was hot, I was sweaty, and every way I turned made the stings burn more. Then I started worrying. Having lost the bees didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did Millie, but I did feel worried about the dressing. With Grandfather expecting me to haul eight loads a day, that would be forty loads in a week—not counting Sunday or the Fourth of July. Three days had already passed and I’d only hauled two loads. Unless my hand got a lot better during the night, I’d lose the next day, too—and then there’d be Sunday. When Grandfather came home, he’d have every reason to say I was shiftless and lazy, and that he couldn’t go away and trust me to do a job man-fashion.
Really, it wasn’t Grandfather that I cared so much about; it was Uncle Levi. He might think I’d done a good job on the haying just because Grandfather was there to drive me along, and that I was no good unless I was driven. Thinking about Uncle Levi and haying, made me remember the horsefork, and I wished there was some sort of a horsefork for loading manure. Then I had an idea. Riding up on the trolley car from Bath, I’d seen a man spreading manure with a machine. I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but lying there in the dark, I could almost see it working again. At the back of the wagon there had been a big cylinder that spun and threw out an even spray of dressing. I knew that, between the wagon wheels and the cylinder, there had to be some sort of a hook-up to make it spin. And I knew there had to be some way of pushing the load back against the cylinder. I lay there for a long time, trying to figure it out, then I got another idea.
There was a Sears-Roebuck catalog hanging on a string in the corner of the privy, and there were pictures of manure spreaders in it. I felt for the commode, found a sulphur match and struck it. The swelling in my eyes had gone down enough that I could see the flame clearly with either one of them. I got up, pulled on my overalls, took the card of matches, and tiptoed downstairs. I took the lantern from the summer kitchen, but didn’t light it until I was around the corner of the woodshed.
Old Bess came out, licked the ends of my fingers, and begged soft in her throat to be petted. I just stopped long enough to pat her head a couple of times, and went on to the privy.
There were half a dozen pictures of manure spreaders in the catalog, all different, but from them I could see just what made the machines work. The cylinder part wouldn’t be too hard to rig up, but I couldn’t figure out any way to make a moving wagon bottom to push the load back. All I could do was to rig a cylinder at the back end of the dumpcart, then, by tipping it up a little, let the load slide back by itself. Since I was left-handed, my swollen right one wouldn’t bother me too much in doing work with hand tools. And, with a manure spreader, I might get thirty or thirty-six loads hauled before Grandfather came home. I took the lantern and went prowling around to see what I could find for a cylinder, an axle shaft for it, and drive chains to make it spin.
The only thing I could find that was round enough and the right size for a cylinder was an old oak log. It was ten or twelve feet long, lying propped up on a couple of pieces of cord wood, and was pretty heavy. I’d only need about four feet of it, and thought the weight would help in keeping the cart body tipped back. After I’d gone down to the barn cellar and measured the dumpcart, I got the big crosscut saw from the carriage house, and cut a piece just the right length off the end of the log. The sawing took quite a while. It made my right hand hurt, but I didn’t have to use my fingers, and got along all right.
The sky was getting gray in the east when I figured out a way to make the shaft and bearings. There was an old buggy with the other wrecked equipment behind the sheep barn. The wheels were all broken, but the hubs were whole, and it had a steel rear axle. By hacksawing a foot off each end of it, I could mount the hubs in the sideboards of the dumpcart and use them for bearings. Then I’d only have to bore the right-sized hole into the center of each end of the log, drive in the pieces of steel buggy axle, and I’d have as good a shaft as anyone could ask for.
> I had one end sawed off the buggy axle when Millie came out and caught me. She raised more hullabaloo and called me more kinds of fool boy than Grandfather ever had. Before she’d quiet down and say she’d help me, I had to remind her that she’d thought the horsefork was a fool idea, too. I even had to make her believe that the bees’ getting away was mostly her fault, that I’d have had the dressing all hauled by the end of the week if I hadn’t been stung, and that I couldn’t get the job done now without a machine.
We worked hard enough during the day that we didn’t have much time to think about bee stings, and by late afternoon we had a manure spreader. It wasn’t a fancy one, but it would work. We’d driven more than a hundred spikes into the cylinder log for teeth, had rigged a sprocket on a wheel hub to turn the spinning chain, and had fastened blocks and tackle on the front end of the cart body so we could adjust the amount of the tip-up we needed. The only real trouble came when I tried to spread the first load. As soon as all the weight had slid back behind the wagon axle, it lifted the front wheels higher than the horses’ backs. We had to chain what was left of the oak log over the front axle to hold the wheels down. Aside from the yella colt’s raising Cain until he got used to the spinning cylinder, we didn’t have any more real trouble with the spreader, but Millie had to drive while I tended the tackle and kept the load sliding right.
Millie was so worried about all the time I’d lost that she would have helped me pitch dressing if I’d let her. She did all the chores, both morning and evening, and held the lantern for me after dark. With the spreader doing all the real work of unloading, I got a twenty-minute rest after each load I had to pitch on. In that way, I could work about as fast as I could swing a fork, and, both of the first two nights, we kept right at it till ten o’clock. On our third day—the last one we had to go—we hauled our forty-seventh load out of the barn cellar just at sunset. When we had it spread, the high stony field was covered from wall to wall with a smooth, even blanket of dressing.
15
Grandfather Sends Me Home
I’D PLANNED to back the dumpcart into the farthest corner of the barn cellar, take the spreader part off, and have it hidden out of sight before we quit work, but we didn’t get it done. Both Millie and I were so tired we were ready to fall asleep, and we still had the evening chores to finish. Grandfather’s train wouldn’t be in until half-past eight in the morning. That would give us a couple of hours of daylight before I left to meet him, and would be all the time needed.
Millie got supper ready while I took care of the horses, and did the milking while I finished the rest of the chores. After we’d washed the dishes, we took our lamps and started to bed. I’d only gone halfway up the stairs when I heard Grandfather call, “Hi, hi, hi, children!” from the driveway. I set my lamp down on the stairs, and Millie and I went running out to meet him. He was trudging up the driveway with his valise in one hand and a big bundle in the other. “Gorry sakes alive, children,” he called out, “it’s tarnal good to be home again. Fred Folsom fetched me out and left me off at the roadway. Took an early train. Couldn’t stay no longer.”
He didn’t answer when I asked if he’d had a good time, but dropped his bundle and bag, drew a deep breath, and said, “By thunder, don’t that smell good? Don’t see why folks wants to live way off in them nasty-smelling cities.”
I had hauled enough dressing that I didn’t think I’d ever smell anything else again, but I took a long deep breath. There was hay and pine and a whiff of wood smoke mixed in with the barn smell. It did smell good, and I said, “I don’t know, either. I don’t like cities.”
Grandfather put an arm around each of us, squeezed a little, and said, “Millie girl, I fetched you an all-fired pretty present.” Then he looked up at me, and said, “Seen Mary whilst I was gone. Told her you was doing first-rate.”
Mother had written me three letters, but she’d never told me what she’d written to Grandfather, so I asked, “Did she tell you why I came down here?”
“Tell me?” he snapped. “Why so’s your old grampa could make a man out of you. Why else? Now you fetch my stuff along, Ralphie. That’s where the presents is.” Then he dropped his arm from my waist and walked on with Millie.
They’d reached the back corner of the house when Old Bess came running from the direction of the barn. She must have been out hunting when she heard Grandfather’s voice. She was panting, and smelled pretty strong of skunk, but he dropped to his knees and held his arms out for her. She came into them with a rush, and it looked exactly as if she were hugging him. Both her forepaws were on his shoulders, and she nuzzled her head close against his neck. He wasn’t saying any words to her, but they were both making the same sort of crooning sounds in their throats.
Millie hurried right into the kitchen to push the teapot forward on the stove and poke up the fire, and I followed her with Grandfather’s things. I’d brought my lamp from the stairs, and steam was rising from the teapot before he came in. The moon had gone behind a cloud and it was dark enough outside that I hadn’t noticed anything strange about Grandfather. When he stepped into the lamplight, he almost frightened me for a moment. He looked as if he’d been hung out in the hot sun until he’d shrunk nine sizes. Millie saw him the same second I did. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she just stood there by the stove and stared at him.
It took me a couple of minutes to realize what had happened. His bushy whiskers had been trimmed close to his cheeks, and into a little pointed cone at his chin. His hair was clipped so short that his Grand Army hat pushed the tops of his ears out, and his eyebrows were just rows of sandy stubble. He had on a blue suit that was big enough for a man once and a half his size. The collar stood away from his neck an inch, and only the tips of his fingers showed at the ends of his sleeves. The bottoms of the pants were under the heels of his shoes, and the extra cloth in the legs hung in folds like the loose skin on an elephant. White dog hair was plastered all over his chest and shoulders, and his knees looked as though he’d crawled up from the Falls on them.
“I’ve et! I’ve et! I’ve et!” he was saying, as he came into the kitchen doorway, but when he saw us staring at him, he stopped and looked up and down the front of himself. “Gorry,” he said, as he shook the sleeves back from his hands and dabbed at the dog hair. “Old Bess must be a-shedding.” Then he peeked up and grinned, “Bought me a new suit of clo’se. Got a real good trade on it off to Portland. Didn’t want to go down to encampment not looking prosperous.”
I couldn’t tell him the suit looked good, and all I could think to say was, “You got a haircut, too, didn’t you?”
Grandfather brushed his hands up across his cheeks so that the stubble whistled, “Neat, ain’t it?” he asked. “Fred Folsom, he kept after me, and I got it in the station at Philadelphy. Barber was asking half a dollar and wouldn’t make no better trade, so I dealt for a close job.”
Millie had reached for the corn broom on the fireplace mantel. As Grandfather was telling about his haircut, she made a couple of brushes at the dirty knees of his pants, but he stopped her. “Leave be! Leave be!” he snapped, and went over to the sofa. “Here, Ralphie! Fetch me my parcel! That’s where the presents is.”
I was pretty sure Grandfather always brought Millie a present whenever he went away. Her eyes were as bright as new pennies, and she could hardly keep her fingers from helping him as he picked the knots. I think he was teasing her a little. The knots didn’t look too tight, but he kept fiddling with them till Millie put her hands out and said, “Let me do it, Thomas.”
“Take care! Take care!” he snapped, but he followed it with a cackling laugh and slipped the knot apart. Inside the bundle, his old suit was folded with the pants around the coat. The lapels were short and stubby, and he must have had it long before I was born. When he’d turned the wrapping paper back, he rubbed his hand over the cloth, and seemed to be talking more to himself than to Millie and me. “Ain’t scarcely wore out at all,” he said. “Didn’t need a new sui
t of clo’se . . . but I couldn’t go a-wearing Rebel gray to Union encampment.”
Then he peeked up again at Millie, grinned, and threw the coat open to show the doubled fold of bright red and white calico. The piece was four or five yards long. Before Grandfather gave it to Millie, he sort of measured it out with his hands and looked it all over. There was a peculiar smell about it, and a black smudge near one end. Grandfather rubbed the smudge on the front of his coat, and looked at it again. “’Tain’t nothing that won’t wash right out,” he said, “and I got a powerful good trade on it, Millie. There’s buttons somewheres. Made him throw ’em in to close the deal.” He moved the cloth along to a clean place, held it up against Millie’s apron, and nodded his head in a little quick jerk, as he said, “By gorry, Millie girl, you’re a-going to look awful pretty when you get that made up into a dress. Let me see. Let me see what he done with them buttons . . . pearl, they was.”
Millie was as tickled with the calico as if it had been pure silk. While Grandfather was rummaging for the buttons, she draped the cloth around her shoulders, rolled the edge back like a collar, and held it in a low V on her chest. She did look pretty, and I was watching her peer into the darkened window-pane, when Grandfather shouted, “There, by thunder, Ralphie! I fetched you a present will be awful comforting come winter. Heft ’em in your hand. Them’ll be powerful warm inside felt boots come zero weather.” When I looked back, he was holding up a pair of white wool socks by the toes. They weren’t exactly white; there were big gray blotches on them and they smelled stronger of smoke than the calico. But they were heavy and I knew they would be warm. Grandfather wrinkled up his nose a little. “Stink, don’t they?” he said, “but a good airing’ll fix that. Made a mighty fine trade on ’em . . . twenty-two cents . . . couldn’t raise the wool for that.” All the time he was holding my socks up with one hand, he was fishing in the bundle with the other. At last he pulled the card of pearl buttons out of the old coat pocket and held them up. Millie was still looking at herself in the windowpane and moving the calico into different shapes, when Grandfather sang out, “There! There! There they be, Millie girl! Mark how they catch the light. By gorry, you’ll be pretty as ary queen.”